I Don't Always Go Shorebirding... but When I Do, I See Dos Avocets!

So, Tropical Storm Lee made his way through Louisiana and broke up over the southeast, but even still we got a lot of rain around here. A lot of rain, actually, it raised the water level of Falls Lake by a whole four inches, which can mean death to mudflats. Still, Mark K and I decided to head down to the Ellerbe Flats to see what we could find.

The rain did something I never expected. Of course, the mud was gone, but the flats really didn’t decrease in area at all. Instead, they’ve become covered in a field of grasses and sedges, and apparently the birds love it! We saw almost 1000 birds (maybe more, it was hard to count them!) all in the grass and on the grassy shores. A bunch of them frequented a little puddle in the middle of the field, including a bunch of Stilt Sandpipers and a couple of Short-billed Dowitchers. All of a sudden, our best birds of the day flew into scope view – a fantastic pair of American Avocets, truly a special bird this far inland!

Oh, and did I mention the Avocets were Durham County bird #200 for me?!

The shoreline abounded with so many birds I would have assumed I was on the coast if we didn’t travel a scant twenty minutes from home. We found both Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs in good numbers, with plenty of peeps of all kinds to go around. In fact, I saw over 60 Semipalmated Sandpipers, which is by far the most I’ve ever seen in one location. I think they even outnumbered the Leasts out there!

They also let us get closer than any other Semipalmated Sandpipers I've ever seen.

Poring through the remaining shorebirds led to many White-rumped Sandpipers, clearly visible by their long primaries and teardrop shape. I counted almost ten definite White-rumpeds out there, including four in one scope view towering over the surrounding Leasts and Semipalms. A good thing too, as the White-rumpeds were lifers for Mark, and a bit of a nemesis at that, apparently. At that point, he announced an interesting pair of birds along the far side of the lake, a pair of nice American Golden-Plovers, both of them in a very cool plumage, and bringing my total up to three for the year.

You know what's awesome? Getting these guys in the same scope view
as a flock of Wild Turkeys. Yeah, that totally happened.

Of course, all the grass around meant that Mark and I were looking for a very specific shorebird. Sure the nine Ruddy Turnstones running around in a tight group were nice, but if you go to coastal North Carolina, you can find one at any time of the year. No, we were looking for a bird that’s considered a nice find wherever you go, the kind of bird that makes even the most seasoned veterans salivate. While looking at a nice White-rumped Sandpiper, Mark yelled out “Woah – Buff-breasted Sandpiper! Right in front of us!”

You know, every Buffy I've ever seen has been at these very flats,

Not just one, although that would have been enough, but actually a pair of them! Truly one of the coolest shorebirds out there, and with the extensive grass, I expect several more of them in the near future.  Having gotten several great birds for the state, Mark and I turned home, but not before seeing a Broad-winged Hawk fly over the old railroad tracks, and hearing a couple of Caspian Terns screaming their way across the local boat ramp. The sun started to set and it was getting late, so we turned in for the day, but what a day! I can’t wait to get back there as soon as possible!

Public Service Announcement: The Dangers of Shorebirding

It’s early September, which means it’s that time of year when any birder worth his salt will be checking the local mudflats each weekend to find those coveted birds: the Scolopacids, the Charadriids, the Sternids, and if you’re lucky maybe a Recurvirostrid or two. There’s the poring over of esoterica to differentiate one Calidris from the next, the hope that a rare coastal bird will somehow find its way inland. I’m talking, of course, about shorebirds (duh), and there’s a certain amount of personal safety you need to exhibit while you’re searching for them.

Shorebirds, as they have evolved over these millennia, enjoy probing through mud. That’s just their prerogative. So, naturally, a birder must venture into the very mud his quarry calls home. For the birds, it’s easy – the largest North American sandpiper (the Long-billed Curlew, if you’re wondering) weighs little over a pound, hollow bones and all. The average birder weighs a hundred or two times more than that, so while the mud might well support a little Least Sandpiper, it will not support a grown man.

This is the problem I ran into last week while I was birding the Granville county side of the Falls Lakes mudflats (which may or may not still be there tomorrow, thanks Lee). After having gotten distant looks at a Wilson’s Phalarope, Ali Iyoob and I headed back to our birding party. One wrong step later, and I was a foot and a half into the mud with both boots planted firmly beneath the surface and the suction of that highly viscous semi-liquid keeping me there indefinitely.

That ground seemed like it was going to be so stable!

That’s why I highly recommend the buddy system whilst shorebirding. Had I been there by myself, who knows if I would have ever gotten out. Maybe they’d be dredging the lake a week later only to find a couple of vulture-cleaned bones sticking out of the lake. I mean, yeah, I probably would have escaped, but I’d’ve gotten really muddy in the process (awful, I know), so it’s lucky Ali was there to help fish me out, and it's lucky Mark was there to photograph our hilarious attempts to wrench me from my silty prison.

Just let this be a lesson to all you birders out there: walk the ‘flats with a birding buddy, or prepare to get a little muddy! And hey, it even rhymes!

#16: Ovenbird - Mason Farm, NC

In the Triangle area, if you walk through the woods at any point during the summer, you’re liable to hear a little bird with a big voice. It could be deep in the forest, yet its call will carry through the trees: teecherteecherteecherteecherTEECHER! If it happens to be right next to you, as is occasionally the case, its song will literally drown out every other sound in the vicinity. I’m talking, of course, about the Ovenbird.

There are two places I’ve been able to find multiple Ovenbirds every time I’m down there. The first is Stagecoach Road, an old railroad grade through the woods around Jordan Lake – during migration, I’ve found over twenty-five in one day, I was literally tripping over them along the path! The other locale is Mason Farm, where we found this little guy on a sweltering June day (to be fair, in June they're all sweltering).

Ovenbird - Mason Farm, NC; 06/14/2010

Actually, I’d heard two or three singing in this one spot where the trail first hits a woodland. A little playback, and all of a sudden five Ovenbirds converged on our location, more than I’ve ever seen at one time. Like Ovenbirds do, they never ventured out of the shadow of the forest, but it’s still one of the best looks I’ve had of these fun little ground-dwelling warblers. Except for that time I had one feeding literally at my feet while I was hiding under a tree from a rainstorm, but that’s a story from another time.

Here I Am... Birding Like a Hurricane!

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there was this little thing called Hurricane Irene that rolled itself on through North Carolina over the weekend. While in the Triangle Irene seemed little more than a whimper, apparently it did some major damage farther east, including ripping a new inlet right through Hatteras Island. But for us Triangle birders, a hurricane means a chance to find birds that are otherwise rare inland.

I met Mark K and Ali Iyoob really early in the morning, because we had an epic day planned, which meant hitting up the local reservoir, Falls Lake. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who had the same idea – we met birders Audrey Whitlock and Nick Flanders before we even got to the meat and potatoes of our birding! The only real storm bird we found that day was a little Least Tern (Durham bird #191!) fluttering its way off the causeway, and that was just the beginning.

Our next stop involved walking down the old abandoned railroad grade off of Will Suitt Rd. The old grade meanders itself through the woods before terminating at a large mudflat just across the lake from the Hickory Hills Boat Ramp. Immediately we found several interesting birds, including Stilt Sandpipers and a Short-billed Dowitcher. Then we saw a large shorebird moving left – a wholly unexpected Willet (192 and counting!) Oh, and you know what the best part of birding with a group is? If you ask real nice, they’ll let you use their pics on your blog!

This one's thanks to Ali - the dude has a ginormous lens!

As odd as the Willet was, I’d seen plenty of them on the Outer Banks recently, so while it was cool to see, it really didn’t pique my interest like this next bird. While scanning the flats next to the bird, we found this nice American Golden-Plover, a bird I don’t often get to see. Plus, it hadn’t quite molted out of its breeding plumage, leaving just a little bit of black belly. Ali and I snuck up on him and he managed this nice shot!

So much more lithe and graceful than its Black-bellied cousin.

As we were watching the birds, a little Black Tern (193!) rolled into our scope views, and began as series of acrobatic swirls as it hunted along the shallow lake, before landing on a rock right in front of us – definitely my best ever views of this bird. And thanks to Mark’s digiscoping rig, he managed this shot of it – a little better than trying to photograph it from a moving boat, eh?

No picture can represent the amount of fun we had watching this acrobatic little guy!

Behind it, a little Piping Plover (194) ran along side its Semipalmated brethren. It’s a very rare bird as far inland as we are, and like most of the birds from the Great Lake region, it was banded – one leg had a red band on it, the other leg had a green one. It’s not quite obvious from this pic, but it sure looked green when viewed it in good light. I’ve emailed a couple of Piping Plover researchers, so perhaps we can figure out where this guy came from!

The fact that there's a green band is actually a matter of some debate - but I recall it so clearly!

Then, Nick announced that he’d found an odd bird. We pored over its leg color and its wingtip length before realizing that we were just too far away to call it, so decided to move closer. Upon doing so, its black legs became clear, a nice buffy hue became evident, and its long jet-black wingtips were absolutely unmistakeable – it was a juvenile Baird’s Sandpiper, a lifer for me and Nick, and a county bird for everybody else (including myself – Durham bird #195!). Luckily, Mark managed this long-distance digiscope of this my life bird.

Er, it was a bit more obvious in the field... but a Baird's Sandpiper nonetheless!

With that, we decided to head on to the next mudflat, but not before spying a dumpy-looking gray shorebird that turned out to be a nice Red Knot, a great bird inland and Durham county bird #196 for me. But we soon moved on to the northern Falls Lake railroad grade, or as it's called in the birding community, the Granville flats. Immediately I came upon a duo of herons standing near the tracks, and they were completely unmistakable – juvenile Tricolored Herons! The county lines do wonky things along that old railroad grade, but luckily those two herons were pretty firmly in Durham, meaning they were county birds #197.

What, you don't see it? Zoom in for God's sake!

Other birds on the flat included an odd looking Greater Yellowlegs along with all the usual stuff. Ali and I waded onto a muddy peninsula, and across the lake we noticed an oddly pin-headed bird running along a rocky shoreline. We concluded it to be a Wilson’s Phalarope, but unfortunately a bird in the wrong county (damn you Granville county government!). Still, a nice bird, and we tried to get everyone else on it, but on our hike back to a better vantage point, I got stuck in the mud in a major way. Thankfully, Ali was there to bail me out, otherwise I probably would have ended up a poor skeletanized birder, as Mark so gleefully put it. We couldn't ever refind the Phalarope, but on the nearby rocks Ali and I found a Northern Water Snake feeding on a Bluegill. It spooked when we showed up, and dropped the fish, which was still alive!

How often do you find a living fish on land?!

Ali and I decided to cross a small peninsula of briars and scrub to get a better look at some of the shallow islands that were forming around us. I got stuck by a thorn pretty good trying to avoid a Black Locust tree, and as I was nursing my bleeding hand on the flats, Ali noticed an odd bird fly up onto an old snag. I dragged my scope around to check it out and was totally surprised to find a Peregrine Falcon munching on a deceased shorebird. Holy crap, what a great bird! Not only was it a state bird for me, but it was also Durham county bird #198. Ali managed this digiscope by holding up his iPhone to my meager scope.

I really cannot express how cool it was to find this bird in basically my own backyard!

I spotted a nice Caspian Tern flying across the lake, but it was time to be getting back to the cars. We decided to leave the Falls Lake area and try for a Hudsonian Godwit at Lake Wheeler (failure), grab some lunch (great success!), find a Best Buy (mild success), and end the day at nearby Jordan Lake, where mudflats were beginning to form at New Hope Creek. Not much around, but we did manage to spot a flock of White Ibis foraging at the north end of the flats, far enough north that I was able to count them for Durham!

The Ibises were my last county bird of the day, #199. We started out early in the morning trying for storm birds, and while there were few to be had, we still managed to whip up a whirlwind, leading to a flood of new birds for the county like we were a damn hurricane. Now if only we could get one to drop off pelagic birds like Irene did in the northeast!

Species Spotlight #2: Black Rat Snake

Well, it’s that time of year again. Hurricane Irene only raised the Falls Lake water level a half inch, and already it’s below that again, which means the mudflats are intact and expanding. Any birder worth his salt is going to be checking these mudflats as often as possible, something I’m very familiar with, as it’s exactly what I did last year. On the way to the flats one day, I discovered this enormous Black Rat Snake sunning himself on the gravel road next to the railroad tracks.

He must've been over five feet long!

As you can see, he was all stretched out along the gravel, and didn’t really mind me taking a couple pictures. He just sat there as I kneeled down beside him to take a couple of macro shot, culminating in this nice one with his tongue flicking out. Lucky he wasn’t an ornery fellow, or he could have easily struck at me, but I guess he was happy enough that I wasn’t manhandling him or anything.

You can't get much closer than this!

After hiking down to the mudflats and back, I crossed the gravel road again and the snake was gone. Looks like he got all the sun he needed, but even so he was a really fantastic snake, and it was so cool to get up-close and personal with this awesome animal!

#15: Acadian Flycatcher - Sandy Creek Park, NC

Sandy Creek Park is really an old standby, and during the summer of 2010, James and I visited it on almost a daily basis. While the two large ponds are really the big draw of Sandy Creek, there’s also a greenway that runs along the creek itself. During large rainstorms, the creek will flood its banks, and when the waters recede the asphalt will become covered in large swaths of the very sand that gives Sandy Creek its name.

In any case, the greenway can be good for forest birds, Prothonotary Warblers, Northern Parulas, and Yellow-billed Cuckoos chief among them, but during the summer it’s home to a particular species of Empidonax flycatcher. Now, Empids love riparian environments, but they’re very hard to identify by sight alone. However, the season will narrow it down – during migration in the Triangle, you can see three species, Least (which I’ve seen on several occasions around here), Yellow-bellied, and Willow (neither of which I’ve seen in the Triangle). But during the summer, we only get one, and walking along the creek on any given day, you’re bound to hear the charming little pSEET! of an Acadian Flycatcher.

Acadian Flycatcher - Sandy Creek Park, NC; 06/06/2010

Unlike other Empids, Acadians prefer to hang out in the tree canopy, rather than down by the creekside, which is exactly what this little guy was doing. I’ve had birds that sound like they’re right above you, yet are impossible to locate because they’re small, the leaves are thick, and they really love to move around! So this shot, all things considered, isn’t the worst in the world. It’s not the greatest either, but it’s the only one we’ve got of an Acadian Flycatcher and I think it’s bound to stay that way.

So Long, and Thanks For All the Birds!

While our time on the Ocracoke had ended, James and I still needed to make our way back home. And, being an island, the only way to get off it was by ferry. Anybody who's ever taken a ferry, especially during peak season, knows that there's a lot of waiting involved. You wait in line to get your ticket. You wait in line to get on the ferry. You even wait while they tell you what lane to get in once you're on the boat! So, to kill time, I did a little exploring around the terminal, and found a nice little spot with a good view of the Pamlico Sound. Immediately, I noticed something big and brown in the sand next to the water's edge - a Horseshoe Crab!

He must've been 2 - 2½ ft long, pretty sizeable!

I'd never seen one this intact in the wild before. Unfortunately, as is often the case with these cool beach finds, he was dead. He'd buried himself pretty good in the sand before he died, so digging him out wasn't really an option, but I've studied these guys in Bio lab before. Underneath is an amalgam of primitive claws and legs, and in fact they're not really related to crabs at all, but rather they're members of the clade Chelicerata, which also happens to include things like spiders and scorpions (crabs and other crustaceans are more closely related to insects). Oh, and another reason you don't want to dig him up? He's pretty darn spiny!

How do I know? I er, kind of tried to dig him up.

Looking back over the sound, there were few birds. A few Spotted Sandpipers on the jetty, a couple of Royal Terns rollicking on the sea breeze. I was actually about to turn back when I heard an odd shrieking whistle, and then a reply from along the jetty. Looking right, I watched as a vocalizing American Oystercatcher flew past to join its friend on the rocks, which was pretty cool to see. Along the shore, the lapping waves brought small fish close to the sand. I still haven't figured out what they are, so if you have any ideas, let me know!

While we're on the subject, anchovies are the worst pizza topping. Ever.

After having a decent amount of fun watching the little fishes, I made my way back to the local establishment known as SMacnally's to have a beer or two while the ferry made its way into port. Lucky for James and I, some guys had just finished their chartered fishing trip and were cleaning their catch, throwing the remains into the harbor. Where there's a free lunch to be had, there are always birds that follow, in this case Brown Pelicans and Laughing Gulls.

He was really putting on quite a show, catching fishy bits in midair!

And that was that. The ferry was arriving and James and I had to get on the boat. As we turned to leave, one of the Brown Pelicans flew up onto a nearby pylon, and James took the opportunity to photograph the bird at close range - and what a pic! He couldn't even fit the whole bird in the frame! Looking at it again, I'm almost ashamed that I wrote off pelicans the whole trip, instead focusing my attention on shorebirds and ibises - they really are nice-looking birds.

He sat there passing judgement on me for a good ten minutes!

Well, we had a ferry to catch, a mainland to get to, and apparently some Reddish Egrets to see. If I could just say one thing to the island that had been my home for those four days, I think it'd be: so long, and thanks for all the birds!